Sean C. Morgan
The District 55 School Board adopted new goals this month, this year focusing on students who meet or achieve state benchmarks.
The board’s first goal continues efforts to provide additional opportunities for students who are meeting or exceeding benchmarks, opportunities that will be available to all students as appropriate.
Last year, Supt. Larry Horton said, the district focused on electives, and “we started the process with Linn-Benton Community College trying to bring more courses to the high school. We also added enrichment programs under the Community Learning Centers (program) this year.”
The CLC program runs out of funding after this year, and the district is trying to find ways to continue the activities, including after-school programs, in the future.
“In the past, we focused an awful lot of resources on helping kids who are not meeting benchmarks,” Supt. Horton said. “Now we’ll try to balance that out with kids meeting or exceeding benchmarks.”
Administrators will take a look at the four goals adopted by the board on Oct. 11 then develop action plans, reviewed by the board, to achieve those goals.
The board’s second goal is to “improve communication with home-schooled families and increase their participation in district-operated programs.”
The reason is two-fold, Supt. Horton said. The district believes it can work with home-schooled students to enrich their experiences.
The law requires that all home-schooled students to register through the local education service district, Supt. Horton said. The district is working with the ESD to come up with phone numbers and addresses for home-school students.
District 55 has between 83 and 87 home-schooled students, Supt. Horton said.
The second reason is “it generates income,” Supt. Horton said. “By generating income, were hoping maybe we can do something with the home-schoolers at Holley and Crawfordsville.”
That idea leads into the third goal, to use “input from last year’s facility planning committee” and “finalize possible educational program opportunities.”
This year, the goal is to make a decision on how to use Holley and Crawfordsville and justify the costs of keeping the two smaller schools open, Supt. Horton said. Potential home-school programs might be among the uses.
The district’s fourth goal is to “place $25,000 in the long-term maintenance fund.”
This is a holdover from previous years when the district had goals to save $50,000 to the fund. The fund has between $80,000 and $85,000 in it.
The fund saves money for long-term capital outlays, so that 15 years from now when roofs and heating systems start leaking or breaking down, the district can pay for repairs without seeking a bond, Supt. Horton said.
With the current bond projects, many other projects remain that could not be covered under the bond, Supt. Horton said. Those include things like painting, which has not been on a regular schedule.
“The board realized that it has to be done,” Supt. Horton said, so the budget for this year included $25,000 for those types of projects, splitting the money the district had been saving.
Painting has been completed at Oak Heights, Foster and parts of the junior high, Supt. Horton said. The district will probably do more painting in the spring. Holley and Crawfordsville are in desperate need, and parts of Hawthorne need paint.
“We’d like to finish off the high school,” Supt. Horton said. Parts of that school probably haven’t been painted in 10 to 15 years.
The board reviewed last year’s goals at its June meeting.
The first of those goals to was to bring back staff as money permitted following cuts in previous years. The district added custodial and secretarial time and added a half-time alternative education teaching position at the high school, which was funded under the CLC grant.
The second goal was to save $50,000 in the long-term maintenance fund.
The third goal was to develop a course of action to address the future of Holley and Crawfordsville. A facility planning committee developed a report about district facilities, with work on the issue continuing this year.
The fourth goal was to ensure Sweet Home students were involved in community service. The school-by-school list of students activities presented in the fall was determined by the board to meet the goal.
In other business, the board:
– Announced that two candidates had applied for budget committee positions. They were Herb Heier in Liberty and Bob MacCoone in Sweet Home. A third position, Foster, has had no applications.
– Passed a resolution opposing Measure 34, which would reduce funding to schools by further restricting logging.
– Abandoned a proposed pre-employment drug-testing policy. The board voted 5-2 to say the policy was unnecessary. Voting yes were Barbara Snow, Diane Gerson, Dave VanDerlip, Milt Moran and Mike Reynolds. Voting against the motion were Tim Crocker and Scott Proctor. Don Hopkins was absent.